California could become the fourth state to remove itself from a controversial federal immigration fingerprint check program, following recent moves by the governors of Massachusetts, New York and Illinois.

The state Senate’s Public Safety Committee has scheduled a hearing next week to consider AB 1081.

The measure would remove California’s 58 counties from the Secure Communities program, which uses biometric data from arrestees in local jails to search for illegal immigrants. Each county would then be free to negotiate its own terms for participating in federal immigration checks.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials contend that local agencies are required to participate in Secure Communities. City and county law enforcement officials send arrestees’ fingerprints electronically to federal immigration agents, then hold identified illegal immigrants until ICE can pick them up.

ICE had taken custody of nearly 72,000 people from California county jails in the past two years, through February. Federal data shows that a third of those illegal immigrants previously had been convicted of a serious offense. However, 28 percent of those booked through Secure Communities had no prior criminal record.

Either you enforce the immigration laws or you change them, but do not ignore them like some “sanctuary cities” in California do. Here is another case where left-wing politicos in San Francisco, a sanctuary city/county for illegal aliens want to ignore federal law. As Attorney General Jerry Brown blocked the San Francisco sheriff from opting out of the immigration program. He argued that the Secure Communities program is not voluntary.

The U.S. Supreme Court late last week upheld the legality of an Arizona law cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, and most voters support having a similar law in their own state.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% of Likely U.S. Voters favor a law in their state that would shut down companies that knowingly and repeatedly hire illegal immigrants. Just 21% oppose such a law, and another 18% are undecided.

Eighty-two percent (82%) think businesses should be required to use the federal government’s E-Verify system to determine if a potential employee is in the country legally. Twelve percent (12%) disagree and oppose such a requirement.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters also feel that landlords should be required to check and make sure a potential renter is in the country legally before renting them an apartment. Twenty-eight percent (28%) do not believe landlords should be required to make such checks.

E-Verify and enforcement against businesses who are repeat offenders will end some of the employment magnet.for illegal immigrants, particularly from Mexico. There is no reason why these businesses should be avoiding their burden of complying with immigration law.

The Congress should immediately require E-verify for all employment, in place of the I-9 requirement. If not, then the states should implement the program and pass laws to more stringently punish employers for repeatedly violating the law.

Now, whether the states will take it upon themselves to do it, is another matter. I cannot forsee California ever passing such legistation. The agriculture lobby in Sacramento is too strong.

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that harshly penalizes businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

In a ruling that could exert pressure on Congress and other states, the court in what amounts to a 5-3 decision declared that Arizona’s law fits within the state’s powers and does not infringe on federal turf. .

“Arizona hopes that its law will result in more effective enforcement of the prohibition on employing unauthorized aliens,” Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. wrote, adding that “the Arizona regulation does not otherwise conflict with federal law.”

The highly anticipated decision keeps intact the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act. Employers could have their business licenses suspended or revoked for hiring illegal immigrants, under the law.

The law also requires Arizona employers to use a federal program called E-Verify to check the immigration status of potential workers. Justices likewise upheld this provision, with Robert calling it “entirely consistent” with federal law.

The decision affirms the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had likewise upheld the state law. It is a defeat for the politically powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Obama administration, both of which had opposed the Arizona law.

Now, the House needs to get busy in mandating E-Verify for all employment in the United States. Big corporate business have been dumping their employment problems on American taxpayers for decades and it is time to stop.

Want to bet that with E-Verify, there will be more jobs available for legal resident Americans?

And, if the Congress, does not act or President Obama vetoes the legislation, then the states should take up the issue and pass their own laws.

I’ll address several other misconceptions in his article below the fold.

Jobs Americans won’t do: At the center of Prof. Codevilla’s jeremiad is the hoary claim that there just aren’t enough Americans suited to do the hard work our society needs to function, and therefore Mexican workers are necessary to fill the vacuum.

Simply as a matter of numbers, this is incorrect. There are perhaps 7 million illegal aliens in the labor force (the other four million or so don’t work), but there are three times that many native-born Americans of working age, with no more than a high-school education, who aren’t even in the labor force. And this doesn’t count those who are unemployed (i.e., actually looking for work) or underemployed (for instance, they have a part-time job but want a full-time one).

What’s more, a detailed look at immigrants by occupation shows that virtually every occupation contains a majority of native-born workers. Some examples:

Maids and housekeepers: 55 percent native-born

Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58 percent native-born

Butchers and meat processors: 63 percent native-born

Grounds maintenance workers: 65 percent native-born

Construction laborers: 65 percent native-born

Porters, bellhops, and concierges: 71 percent native-born

Janitors: 75 percent native-born

How can an occupation be described as “a job Americans won’t do” when most people who do it are, in fact, native-born Americans?

Nor is this just the tail end of some better time, with Americans represented by aging holdovers still willing to do blue-collar work; fully one-third of the native-born in high-immigrant occupations are under 30.

What’s more, the presence of large-scale immigration appears to exacerbate the exodus of Americans from blue-collar occupations. One of my colleagues frequently drives from Washington to central Pennsylvania and notes that it’s remarkable how, as you leave the immigrant-heavy Washington area, the fast food places at each subsequent interchange seem to somehow find a larger and larger share of American kids able to flip burgers.

The data on teen employment bear this out. While it is true that labor force participation for teenagers — the “swarms of youth in malls and campuses” Prof. Codevilla sniffs at — has been declining across all ethnic groups and levels of education, immigration accelerates the process. My colleague Steven Camarota has estimated that “On average, a 10 percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of the labor force reduces the labor force participation rate of U.S.-born teenagers by 5.79 percentage points in 1994-95 and 4.57 percentage points in 2006-07.” More immigrants means fewer teenagers working.

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly, (R-CA), Chairman of the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement, issued the following statement on President Obama’s call today for Congress to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants:

“Providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, as the President called for again today, without requiring illegal immigrants to return to their countries of origin and apply for legal status, is amnesty.

“Amnesty will not pass Congress, Mr. President. It is unfair to the 26 million American workers who are unemployed or underemployed and it is unfair to those who are waiting to legally immigrate to the United States.

“Conservatively, seven million people are working in the United States illegally. Instead of focusing on creating jobs and getting 26 million Americans back to work, the President’ proposal would give millions of illegal immigrants the opportunity to work legally in the United States, attract more illegal immigrants looking for the same opportunity, and take more jobs from American workers.”